Sweeney Todd, Chichester Festival - review

It's been another cherishable season at the resurgent Chichester Festival Theatre but there's a wonderful sense that they've been saving the best until last. One musical, Singin' in the Rain, has already done so well here this year that it will soon be transferring to the mighty Palace Theatre in the West End. I fully expect it to be joined in London by this magnificent production, easily the finest I've seen, of Stephen Sondheim's dark and tuneful masterpiece.

Director Jonathan Kent paints sophisticated mood pictures that are chilling and humorous by turn and, often, simultaneously. He has been blessed with the Sweeney/Mrs Lovett pairing of one's dreams in Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton.

I'd forgotten what a rich, sonorous voice Ball has, like taking a bath in milk and honey, and it's used to glorious effect on Sondheim's complex music and lyrics. Ball's Sweeney, consumed with vengeful bitterness over his wrongful conviction at the hands of a corrupt judge and the consequent destruction of his family, is a commanding, brooding presence.

Staunton, by contrast, is an unbridled joy, brimful of pep and invention. It's hard to remember, post-Vera Drake, that this wonderful Oscar-nominated actress actually made her name in musical theatre but this performance offers a top-class reminder. Up she pops from under the shop counter for her first entrance, proudly singing her boast to make "the worst pies in London". It's a glorious comic turn but Staunton also captures delicately the pathos of Mrs L's situation: hideous human pies and bloodthirsty revenge missions will be made and tolerated, because she loves Sweeney and has done for many years.

Anthony Ward has conceived a stripped-down, two-tier design scheme that suggests rather than fleshes out locations expressly; it's beautifully redolent of long shadows in a suspicious city that is over-fond of locking people away in asylums.

There's strong support from Lucy May Barker and the spirited Luke Brady as the plucky young lovers, and Robert Burt as that grandstanding pseudo-Italian shyster Pirelli. What else can I say? Book your haircut now.